“Who was that lady I saw you with last night,” Tom Barrett? #wirecall

…Oh, relax: it’s an old vaudville/movie routine. You know: “That was no lady: that was my wife.” Yeah, that one’s older than my parents, let alone me. Still: why exactly did Democratic Wisconsin recall gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett shrug off ceremonies honoring Milwaukee policemen this week? Including one on Wednesday that honored Milwaukee cops slain in the line of duty? I ask… well, mostly because I figure that the answer is going to embarrass Tom Barrett; but also because Barrett likes to talk a lot about how Governor Scott Walker is supposedly campaigning at the expense of his job. Which makes Walker’s presence at a function that Barrett was absent from – we can all agree that honoring slain Milwaukee policemen is part of the job of Mayor of Milwaukee, surely? – somewhat, well, awkward.

Snark aside, I’m hearing that the reason that Tom Bartlett might have skipped out of this may not have been for the immediately obvious reason (which is to say, sucking up to a campaign donor who was on a tight time schedule). It may simply be that Tom Barrett just doesn’t like cops or firefighters very much.

UPDATE: Just got sent this via @jbsatt on Twitter: Barrett passed on honoring cops to… suck up to the unions. It’s not entirely clear whether this happened Tuesday night or Wednesday, but either way… well, when I got sent this the only comment attached to it was “DOOM?”

Yeah. DOOM.

[Other UPDATE: So, yeah, it looks like that last set of edits didn’t go through at all. Oops…]